COMPLEXITY / PNG TEXTURES

[Julia Oxalis]

Hello everyone! I am hair creator and i noticed that my alpha PNG is very very heavy, my mesh has 3000 complexity, when I add alpha png, it goes to "14.000 complexity  (sizes 1024x1024), how can i solve it? what type of archives (format) do you guys use for alpha textuers?

Thanks ^^ <3

[Rolig Loon]

Well, for a start, 1024 x 1024 is way overkill for hair textures.  Cut back to at least 512 x 512, maybe smaller. Then try using alpha masking instead of alpha blending.

[Coffee Pancake]

Currently there is no reduction in LI for using alpha masks .. even Oz has said there should be.

[ChinRey]

9 hours ago, Julia Oxalis said:

what type of archives (format) do you guys use for alpha textuers?

The format you upload the texture as, doesn't matter. All textures are converted to jpeg2000 after upload anyway.

 

8 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Then try using alpha masking instead of alpha blending.

Unfortunately alpha masking don't really work very well for hair. With alpha masking each pixel is either fully transparent or fully opaque and that's too coarse a resolution for hair. With alpha blending you can simulate a higher resolution with semi-transparent pixels.

 

8 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Well, for a start, 1024 x 1024 is way overkill for hair textures.  Cut back to at least 512 x 512, maybe smaller.

Always good advice but it won't help much in this case. Without the transparency, a 1024x1024 texture will only add 512 to the guesstimated render cost while a 512x512 will add 384.

It's the cost added by the alpha blending that matters here and it is the same regardless of the texture resolution. It is calculated separately for each PMS ( Prim, Mesh and Sculpt) in the linkset though and that's one way for hair makers keep the render cost down: Use alpha only on the parts that actually need it and a non-alpha texture (or - even better whenever possible - the same texture with alpha mode set to none) for the rest.

This will give you an actual reduction in render cost btw - it's not just another cheat to beat the system - and as a bonus, it will also make it easier to handle the inevitable alpha sorting bug issues.

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by ChinRey